What are some of the words that come to mind when one thinks of the middle ages in Europe ?______ cold,famines,plagues,boredom,toil,superstition,religiosity ,fear,cruelty,wars,poor hygiene ,death,maudlin piety ,guilt, hell-fire,mud and mire, ,xenophobia,persecutions & pogroms etc etc . Prof.Huizinga does a pretty decent job describing all this.However I came away disappointed from this book because it is nothing but a compilation and collation of FACTS .There is little in the way of analysis and interpretation .From the rave reviews of this book I was expecting something more original & seminal , given the obvious expertise of the author in this area. Reading this book was a chore _____perhaps by reading this book the author wanted us to "feel" first hand what those poor ,illitrate peasants in the medieval villages must have felt on those cold,dark & seemingly never-ending winter evenings !

I first picked this up as a junior in college. It changed my life! It changed how I thought about history and how I thought about writing. Huizinga paints a wonderfully colorful and descriptive picture of the 15th century. Though this could easily be considered my favorite book (if I could only write like the dear professor!), one must be wary of a framework (Hegelian?) through which he interprets his marvelous work of scholarship. The very title belies this. First of all, that he creates such a demarcation of epoque/periodisation, leads one to wonder how he sees the progress of history as a whole. He sees the 15th c. as the end of an era grasping and clinging to old forms. Thus, he (along with Jakob Burckhardt) has tempered our minds to see the Middle Ages as the proverbial "Dark Ages" and the Renaissance literally a rebirth from this darkness. It seems, though, that does not give enough credit to the culture that was alive and well, rather than the bleak, autumnalism (as the title of the recent translation implies) that he portrays. It is a great work, though! His command of the literature and history of the time is astounding, and his style is fresh and intriguing.

I first read this book 25 years ago in college. At the time, it was one of those book I just wanted to get through for a grade, but there were details of it I remembered, such as the common practice of sllicing apples into thirds to represent the Trinity.

Well, picking up this book to re-read while living in Europe turned out to be a far greater pleasure than I imagined. Huizinga offers an elegant portrait of an entire era, the Late Middle Ages, in both visual and intellectual detail. You learn about codes of honor, the different ways in which life was perceived, and the practices of love. It is beautifully written and vivid.

There are limitation to the approach, of course. It is not about economics or living standards. It does not function as a survey, and hence the reader must have solid knowledge of medieval history before starting the book. You will have to get these elsewhere. But if you come to this book with the right expectations, it is fascinating and wonderful from cover to cover.

Warmly recommended.

My problem with this book is the same that has been expressed by a couple other reviewers: to wit, does Huizinga really know what was going through the hearts and minds of the people in the particular era and region with which the book deals, as the author and his proselytes claim? My answer is, in a word,-No. No book can. History is an elusive subject under the best of circumstances.

Let me cut to the chase. Huizinga is really not so much interested in demarking the Middle Ages from the Renaissance. After one gets into the thick of things, it becomes quite obvious that what he's actually about is contrasting the Middle Ages (as he understands or imagines them) from his own historical milieu. I won't belabor the point: one citation will suffice. On page 235, Huizinga asseverates that, "There was no great truth of which the medieval mind was more certain than those words from the Corinthians, 'For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face.' They never forgot that everything would be absurd if it exhausted its meaning in its immediate function and form of manifestation, and that all things extend in an mportant way to the world beyond." How does he know? Did he conduct extensive interviews with illiterate serfs whose life expectancy was a fraction of ours and spent almost all their waking hours trying to put food in their bellies? - No, the worldview Huizinga describes above is one common to mystics and poets of all eras and climes. His very citation of the Corinthians subverts any notion that it was exclusive to the Netherlands in the Middle Ages.

Huizinga was essentially an artistic and poetic writer, and the insights one comes away with from his book are such as one might expect from one so gifted: textured and fascinating portraits of a time now lost. But they are just that, verbal pictures, calling to mind not so much Breughel or any of the other artists whose works are Plated in the middle of the book, but that of the Pre-Raphaelites.

This is an enchanting book and well worth the read. It's just that you may have to hang your critic's hat upon a medieval peg before sitting down to enjoy it. I trust you have one...a medieval peg that is.

This book is written in a grotesque and literary manner. Johan Huizinga, the Great Dutch pre-War historian, possesses large cultural acknowledge and a huge historical skill. Comparisons can be made with Burckhardt's book about the Renaissance. If you want to know something about the later Middle Ages, especially in France and the Burgundian Countries (Low Countries), you must read this book for fully understanding the cultural-historical aspects of human medieval life and thought.

This book is original at least in one sense: it is a historic book without battles, thus a relief.
Huizinga evocates masterfully the change in the mentality and the way of life at the end of the Middle Ages.
The Roman Church becomes corrupt from head to foot: simony, selling of indulgences. She even excommunicates the Franciscan lifestyle.
The knighthood organizes tournaments.
Justice becomes a showdown: cities buy condemned persons in order to organize their public execution as a big show for their inhabitants.
Painting becomes naturalistic. Agnes Sorel, the mistress of the king, is a model for the Blessed Virgin.
Music becomes an imitation of natural sounds, e.g. yapping dogs.
Literature becomes playing with words or excessively romantic (Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles).
In one word, varnish.
Protestantism and the Renaissance will provoke a new revival.
I recommend this book to everyone interested in perceptive historical analysis.

Please be aware that this book really is a horrible translation of Huizinga's original and insightful attempts to make sense of 'play'.

Huizinga's contribution of the new word 'ludiek', introduced through his translations in almost every language but English, is simply left out of the introduction and does not occur in the book. This means that the logic Huizinga has set up, pointing out how cultural practices are characterized by 'ludieke' features (i.e. features of their game-like quality) gets reduced to a book on 'game elements'. The entire logic of play creating culture therefore never comes across, but stays obscured behind game elements in culture.

This translation should really be immediately taken from the market or redone by someone who actually tries his best to translate with integrity. An indication of the complete lack thereof is the note of the editor that he changed the subtitle from 'play element of culture' (which Huizinga in his introduction clarifies he fought for on several occassions to be maintained) into 'play element in culture', because "English prepositions are not governed by logic". The English-centricity complete overrules at least 90% of what Huizinga actually expresses.

Horrible.

Huizinga illustrates with numerous examples out of all sort of civilizations that culture first appears under the form of play. The first forms of culture are played. He finds his examples in as different fields as jurisdiction, art, poetry, battle ...
I agree that play was certainly influential or important for certain aspects of cultural life, but not for essential points like politics, exercise of power or distribution of wealth within a society.
This book is not in the same class as his other more known book 'The Autumn of the Middle Ages'.
He makes an important remark in his diatribe against Carl Schmitt, whom he reproaches his wrong point of view. Schmitt founds his jurisdictional work on the principle of 'friend-foe', in other words on war not on peace.

Huizinga's genius is to find the idea of play hiding like a spider in the most unlikely places. The medieval "judicial duel", where justice was done by fighting? Clearly a development of ancient forms of combat - and that combat itself was always highly stylised and ritualised, which show, according to Huizinga, that they themselves were "play" forms. He demonstrates with convincing scholarship that Greek tragic drama and religion were also born from play.

The important thing for the reader to understand is that Huizinga does not think that play is in any way trivial or less than serious. In fact, he argues that play is a wider, more all-embracing concept than seriousness. Because the idea of seriousness excludes play, whereas the idea of play can very well be taken seriously. In the latter portion of his book, he laments the fact that play has been ripped from its organic place at the heart of communities and transferred to commercialized spheres of sport.

Contrary to what another reviewer says here, Huizinga was not writing in the 1950s but in 1938. A time when the old ideals of nobility and chivalry even in war had been exploded. A time when the very idea of play was something worth cherishing, something to attempt to preserve for a more fortunate future.

This is a masterpiece of deeply humanist historical and cultural analysis. If it annoys poststructuralists, well, its the poststructuralists who have the problems.

Steven Poole, author, Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution